I have brought a Thinkpad R40E. Installed slackware 10.2 and all hardware was detected and/or set up fine and considering I am a relative newbie I was impressed with myself.

But then I noticed that the ethernet card (eth0) was not working(!!). After a bit of hunting and web research I find that the ethernet driver is not support in the kernal (default 2.4.31). So I downloadd the source from the Broadcom site and have tried to follow the instructions to compile from source. The end result is meant to be the tg3.o kernal module. But instead when I run make I get and error. The error code is 1 and the message is "redefination of if_mii". Being a programmer (windoz sry... trying to leave the darkside... Have seen the qt/kde/pthon/ruby/mono light) I tried to go through the source code but it's beyond my limited c skills.

The package I downloaded from broadcom is the one for the BCM5700. Any help advice or howtos would be great.

simcox1

05-03-2006 11:13 AM

It might be easier to use a newer kernel if you find that driver doesn't work. I'm not sure. You can simply download a 2.6 kernel from slackware.com, current. Install it with installpkg. There might be another solution.

dcdbutler

05-03-2006 01:03 PM

the tg3 module was compiled as a module during installation with my kernel for 2.4.31 (this was the bare.i kernel). Is tg3 the driver for the BCM5700? If so, you should be able to do:

# modprobe tg3

or recompile the kernel with support for the module if it's not installed already.

Cheers

[Edit: I have 2.4.26 kernel, not 2.4.31]

TheGreatGonzo

05-18-2006 02:36 PM

Network Card

Cheers for the advice chaps.

I'm building the courage to upgrade the kernal to a 2.6 variety at the moment. (This would be my first time!!) I might be mistaken but I tought that the kernal did not natively support the broadcom drives?? Does anyone know for sure. If it's just a case of upgrading the kernal and including the driver thats what I will do.

Cheers

Gonzo

Nylex

05-18-2006 02:50 PM

The 2.4.31 kernel source has tg3 driver in it. I mean, it's part of the tree, but it may not be compiled in your kernel (or as a module). 2.6 also has tg3 in the tree. Actually, according to this it's been included since 2.4.19.